


it’s in the weight he does not carry

by Akaihyou, HeyBoy, Someone_aka_Me



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming, Bucky is jealous of himself, Idiots in Love, M/M, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Length: 1-1.5 Hours, Sam cannot believe he’s stuck with two of them, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:08:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26653441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akaihyou/pseuds/Akaihyou, https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeyBoy/pseuds/HeyBoy, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Someone_aka_Me/pseuds/Someone_aka_Me
Summary: Wherein Bucky is jealous of himself, the other Bucky is very confused, and Sam is frequently exasperated. Featuring time travel, kidnappings, and way too much discussion of destiny, love, and the self.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson
Comments: 13
Kudos: 107
Collections: Sambucky Big Bang 2020





	it’s in the weight he does not carry

**Author's Note:**

> Playing fast and loose with canon here, so… We’re handwaving Thanos, and the whole “civil war” thing except for Bucky going to Wakanda because that man deserves a vacation, and… Bruce is back on Earth. I don’t know, go with me here.

Size: 46.93 MB

[Mp3 on Dropbox](https://www.dropbox.com/s/fnrxgkd0u99motv/its%20in%20the%20weight%20he%20does%20not%20carry.mp3?dl=0)

[Mp3 on Mediafire](http://www.mediafire.com/file/oo3wwr58uiqd32e/its+in+the+weight+he+does+not+carry.mp3/file)

* * *

_France_

_Bucky Barnes the younger_

The last thing he remembers is a ringing in his ears, a high pitched whine, and then darkness.

That’s… not actually that weird, given his life right now. He’s assuming it was a bomb, possibly a weird high tech HYDRA bomb because it didn’t sound like a standard grenade (and what is his life even, that he can identify a grenade by sound?).

The weird part, though, is that he wakes up alone.

Bucky hasn’t woken up alone in years. He… can’t actually remember the last time. Before he shipped out, for sure.

His head is _splitting_.

He blinks his eyes open, and even the dim light makes him squint, makes the construction crew in his head get louder.

The light is coming in through a window, illuminating dust motes drifting through the air.

He sits up, ignoring the way it makes his skull feel like it’s cracking open, and squints at his surroundings.

It’s not just the air that’s full of dust. The whole place is.

It’s… something is off here. It looks like a warehouse, high arching ceilings, but mostly empty space, and long abandoned.

The only disturbance in the dust is him.

And there are no footsteps.

How long has he _been_ here?

But no, that’s not the right question. The dust isn’t on top of him. It’s _underneath_.

 _How did he get here_?

…

_New York_

_Bucky Barnes the elder_

The thing is… The thing is, Bucky can’t pinpoint a moment when it happened. He can’t remember ever having the realization that he was in love with Sam Wilson. It feels like something that’s always been.

He knows that’s impossible, but what does it matter? It’s not like his brain works in chronological order these days anyway.

That’s not to say that he doesn’t remember pulling the steering wheel out of Sam’s car. He does, in the same fractured, kaleidoscope way he remembers anything that they burned out of him, distantly, as though it happened to someone else.

He knows it didn’t. And he knows it doesn’t feel that way to Sam.

Sam probably remembers things in chronological order. He probably remembers the steering wheel, remembers the gunfire, remembers Bucky’s boot to his chest, tearing off a wing and shoving him off a helicarrier.

But Sam has never held it against him.

Sam has never acted like Bucky tried to kill him the first time they met. Not like he forgave him for it, but like there was nothing at all to forgive.

Falling in love with Sam feels like the most inevitable thing that has ever happened to Bucky. Sam is kindness wrapped around pure steel heart, and Bucky wants to give him the world, if he wants it.

Bucky couldn't say when it started. Maybe it was when Sam chased him across Europe, only catching up when Bucky wanted him to. It could have been when Sam visited him in Wakanda, after Shuri was done putting his brain through a very helpful blender, or maybe after, when he returned to Brooklyn to share a tiny apartment with Steve and Sam.

Maybe it doesn’t matter.

What matters is waking up in the morning in his closet sized bedroom and walking into their tiny kitchen to see Sam standing there, coffee in hand, smile soft and sleepy the way it only is before he’s finished his first cup.

What matters is showing up at the VA at 12:30 and pulling Sam away from his desk to have lunch, or bringing takeout if it’s been a bad week, and the way Sam smiles up at him, bright and toothy and warm.

What matters is Sam and Steve coming back from a morning run to find Bucky has migrated from his bed to the couch and fallen back asleep. The way Sam will laugh quietly and lift Bucky’s feet and sit underneath them. The way Bucky will wake up slowly with his feet in Sam’s lap, the television playing something inane, and Bucky’s breath will catch and the moment will feel infinite, spun out like spider-silk, stronger than it has any right to be.

What matters are the rare occasions the Avengers call for more than just Steve, Bucky suiting up in black tactical gear and Sam strapping on wings, the way it feels to look at Sam through a scope and know that Bucky has his back, that no matter how messed up his mind is he can still do this.

What matters is that Bucky loves Sam, loves him in the small moments and the big ones, loves him in a way that feels impossible to contain.

Maybe he shouldn’t.

Contain it.

The thing is, when he thinks about telling Sam, the first emotion he can identify is _panic_.

Bucky has been exposed before. Hydra pulled out everything that he was, turned him inside out, picked apart every piece of him until there was nothing left that was his anymore. _Sam_ has seen him scraped raw, seen him at three in the morning, throat scratchy from screaming in his dreams.

But this is his _heart_.

And besides, it’s a novelty to have something that’s just his. To have a secret that’s something _good_.

It’s not that he thinks Sam would be shitty about it. He wouldn’t.

But it’s like the box that Pandora found. When it’s opened, nothing can ever go back in the box. And that _changes_ things. Bucky has risked a lot in his life. He’s risked his own life, time after time. He doesn’t know that he wants to risk his heart.

Not when he’s already happy.

…

_Somewhere over the Atlantic_

_Bruce Banner_

“What are you expecting to find, Bruce?”

Bruce looks up at Natasha’s question from where he’d been staring at the readings on his StarkPad. “Hmm?”

“It’s been a long time since you’ve called in backup, doc,” Clint days from the pilot’s seat in the Quinjet. “In fact, I don’t think _you’ve_ ever requested it.”

“I… don’t actually know what it is,” Bruce says slowly. “All I know is that I haven’t seen gamma spikes like this since… since Loki opened a portal over New York five years ago. This is less sustained, more like… if it was a portal, it barely opened up long enough to drop someone through. But I don’t even want to know who would have the power to do that at this point.”

“This is where it would be nice to have SHIELD resources,” Clint mutters. Bruce can’t say he disagrees with the sentiment, but in truth, he doesn’t miss the agency much. Coulson had been fine enough, but most of them had made Bruce’s skin crawl. If they weren’t terrified of him, they eyed him like they were wondering what they could get out of him, something in their eyes just a little too familiar, a little too much like General Ross for Bruce’s comfort.

Bruce admits to his own paranoia, but it’s saved his life more times than he can count, so he’s not sure it can be considered a negative. He hopes this whole thing is just a case of paranoia. Maybe a nuclear reactor had an issue (and what is his life, that he’d _rather_ this be a reactor breakdown?). Maybe there’s a group of French scientists experimenting with nuclear fusion. There are plenty of reasons for a spike in gamma radiation. It doesn’t have to be the tesseract.

But no natural or human-made source has ever spiked that high before.

Maybe it’s a sensor malfunction.

Bruce hopes it’s a sensor malfunction.

…

_France_

_Bruce Banner_

It’s not a sensor malfunction.

It’s a man.

Scanning the building from the jet had revealed a single life form inside the large warehouse building. Natasha and Clint had snuck in first, but it had been mere minutes before Nat’s voice had come over the coms.

“Doc? All clear, but you’re gonna want to see this.”

Bruce had made his way into the building to find Nat and Clint with their guns up, both pointed at…

“ _Barnes_?” Bruce says in surprise.

The man turns to face him, and it’s weird, because the bone structure is familiar and the shade of blue eyes is too, but the hair isn’t, nor is the set of his stance. He’s standing between Natasha and Clint, hands up, looking surprisingly easy for a man with two guns pointed at him.

“How do you know my name?” he asks, and that’s the only reason Bruce feels confident that it _is_ Barnes, or at least some version of him.

Not their version. He has two flesh hands, for one thing. Probably arms, too, but those are hidden beneath an old fashioned military uniform.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” It’s Bucky, so Bruce doesn’t expect an answer before he answers the question Barnes asked first.

He’s wrong about that. This is _definitely_ not the same Bucky Barnes.

“We were checking out a warehouse - the shape was a lot like this one, but it had a lot more in it. Something… exploded? I think. Who are you? Where’s Steve?”

“Rogers?” Natasha says. “We can take you to him, but there’s some things you might need to know first.”

“Is he okay?”

“He’s fine. That’s not it.”

For the first time, Barnes’ expression goes guarded, and the expression is far more familiar than any of the ones he’s worn so far.

“What’s wrong? Who are you? Did you put me here?”

Bruce sighs, wondering how on earth to even begin to explain to a man that he appears to have time traveled over seventy years into the future.

…

_France_

_Bucky Barnes the younger_

2017.

It’s 2017.

Bucky blinks at the short, curly haired man in front of him. The man who claims to know his name because they know each other. In the future.

He’s _in the future_.

_What the fuck?_

This doesn’t happen to people in real life. This only happens in the science fiction books he likes to pick up from time to time. Or the comics.

“I want to see Steve.”

No one in the room looks surprised.

“We can do that, but he’s in New York, so you’ll have to come with us.”

As Bucky follows them, a thought occurs to him.

“Wait, am I old now? Is _Steve_?”

He watches the redhead exchange a look with the curly haired man. The man shrugs. “Personally, I’ve always been in favor of the multiverse theory, in which case there’s no real danger. But that’s just a theory.”

“I trust your theories, Doc.” She turns to Bucky.

“Neither of you age quite like normal people.”

Bucky hums thoughtfully. “So Zola’s serum worked then. I thought it might have.”

“It’s not quite what Steve has,” Bruce can’t help but point out as they reach the warehouse doors. “But a lot of the biological changes match up, yes, most notably the increased rate of cellular growth and repair, responsible for decreased aging.”

They step out into the sunlight, and Bucky blinks.

This warehouse was in the middle of an empty lot, not much more than a dirt drive leading up to it.

There are now a few houses, barns, thriving farmland, roads, and an airplane in the middle of a field.

Bucky blinks at the plane. It looks like something straight out of the comics, sleek and futuristic, all silver.

The bit of him that assumed they were lying is now convinced. On the other hand, the bit of him that thinks this is most likely a fever dream as he dies grows much louder.

Seriously. _What the fuck?_

…

_Stark Tower_

_Bucky Barnes the elder_

Bucky squints at the man Bruce has brought them to see.

He knows that face.

It’s not the face that he sees in the mirror, not these days, because the hair is short and the eyes are so _young_ and so many scars are missing, but he knows that face.

“What did you do, Bruce?”

Bruce looks offended. “Excuse you. I didn’t _do_ anything. There was a massive spike of gamma radiation in Northern France, and I went looking and I found _this._ ”

 _This_ is Bucky.

Bucky from about seventy years ago. Standing in the middle of Stark tower, staring at the older version of himself in fascination.

“So clearly seeing himself isn’t creating a paradox,” says Stark from the other side of the room.

“There are two of them,” says Sam. “Why are there two of them? One was plenty.”

“I don’t trust him,” Bucky says.

“He’s _you_ ,” Sam feels the need to point out.

“Exactly. I don’t trust him.”

Sam actually drops his head into his palms.

“Split timelines or impossible paradox?” Tony wonders. “What do you think, Bruce? Hey, Terminator, you wouldn’t happen to remember a jaunt to the future back when you had two arms, would you?”

“No,” Bucky says stiffly, staring at the doppelgänger in Tony’s living room.

“Hmm, point for split timelines, but not definitive yet.”

“Doc is pulling for the multiverse,” Natasha informs him. Tony turns to Bruce, looking positively giddy.

“No, Tony,” Bruce says before Tony even opens his mouth.

“What?” Tony says, mock offended. “I haven’t even said anything!”

“We are not going to attempt to make two of you. Nor me either.”

Tony pouts. “No fun, jolly green.” But he brightens again in seconds. “Do we at least get to science them up?”

Bruce’s answering look is so simultaneously long-suffering and affectionate that Bucky looks away, turns back to looking at his own face, missing the scar over his right eyebrow and the one on his left cheek.

His own body, with two flesh and blood arms.

He watches his younger face crack a smile and say, “Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m starved from all this time travel. Where does a fella have to go to get something to eat around here?”

Some of the tension in the room snaps. Steve moves forward, and the younger Bucky falls into him in a way Bucky aches with remembering — hugs him as though there aren’t mountains between them that can’t be articulated, and Bucky has to turn away.

He’s working on it. _They’re_ working on it, on the way Bucky feels like he has to be something for Steve, has to be the man he once was, and the way that Steve sometimes expects him to be.

Not on purpose. Steve would never do that to him.

But sometimes Steve makes a reference to their shared past that Bucky can’t quite grasp and it feels like they’re just ever so slightly out of step, and they don’t know how to get it back.

Bucky hates it, because Steve is his best friend, his family, and the way they are _hurts him_ , and Bucky never wanted to be something that hurts Steve.

But this, seeing the uncomplicated affection between Steve and the literal incarnation of who he used to be, Bucky aches with it.

He looks away.

He catches Sam’s gaze, the only one in the room looking at _him_ instead of the other one.

…

_Stark Tower_

_Sam Wilson_

Maybe it’s weird, but the first thing Sam notices about the younger Bucky isn’t his youth, and it isn’t his relative lack of hair.

It’s his eyes. It’s the set of his shoulders. It’s the weight he’s not carrying. He meets the gaze of everyone he looks at, even though they’re all strangers to him. His emotions are plain on his face, instead of Sam having to read them in his shoulders, his neck, his hands.

He’s been to war, that much is clear from his eyes and his uniform. But he’s missing the weight of decades of imprisonment, of knowing what it is to be erased and used, of knowing there’s blood on his hands that will never wash clean, no matter how many people tell him it wasn’t his fault.

And Sam aches.

Because Bucky deserves to be _this_. But that’s not how life works.

He looks back at the Bucky that he’s familiar with, sees the tension in his shoulders, the way he’s pointedly not looking at Steve and the younger version of himself. And god, that’s got to be so _bizarre_ to watch.

Sam catches Bucky’s gaze, smiles at him faintly, nothing more than a recognition of the situation, but it eases just a little of the tension from his muscles, and for now that’s enough.

…

_Stark Tower_

_Bucky Barnes the younger_

So they weren’t lying about Steve.

And they weren’t lying about the future.

Because that’s… that’s him. That’s him, with hair down to his shoulders, used as a shield, and a matte black left arm.

Can he even ask what happened without fucking up the timeline? How can they even be in the same room?

It’s incredibly disorienting, and not just because he’s only ever seen his own face in a mirror, not reversed like this.

But Steve hugs just the same, and they move through the massive _skyscraper_ — and isn’t that the coolest thing he’s ever seen? — to the kitchen, and the man from the plane with the curly hair starts piling meats and cheeses and crackers on the counter.

Everyone in the room starts introducing themselves, and there’s the three from the plane, and it turns out the other shorter man with the restless energy is called Tony _Stark_ , like Howard had a kid and he’s all grown up already, and then there’s the man who came with Steve and the other version of himself. He introduces himself as Sam, and he’s got a beautiful smile and a cute gap between his front teeth and without even thinking Bucky’s smiling back the way he does when he really _means it_ , saying, “Hello there, Sam. I’m Bucky.”

Sam smirks back at him. “I know that, genius. Or did you miss the whole time-travel thing? Do we need to start at the beginning?”

His laugh is bright and genuine. Sam’s answering smile is softer but no less genuine.

…

_Stark Tower_

_Bucky Barnes the elder_

The laugh cracks through Bucky like he’s been hit. He hasn’t laughed that freely in… decades, probably. He watches Sam smile easily at this younger, less wounded version of himself and he feels something inside of him fracture.

It’s never been that easy for them. They’ve always had a first meeting with several attempts at murder between them; something Sam had never held against him but Bucky couldn’t forget. They’ve always had Bucky’s tendency to pull away from anything that he might get attached to between them, too used to having things taken away. Sam is easy to be around, but that’s never made them _easy_ ; there’s too much there.

Bucky knows he used to be charming. Smooth. It used to be easy for him to read people for more than threat level, for interest and attraction.

He lost those skills somewhere along the way.

But he knows what his own face looks like when he’s interested, when he’s trying to read a situation to tell whether it’s safe to put out a subtle signal, especially with another man, where the ground is always a minefield.

Sam deserves this version of him. A version that can be smooth and charming. A version that can express himself.

Sam deserves easy.

Somehow it still feels like he’s been stabbed in the chest.

…

_Stark Tower_

_Sam Wilson_

Sam feels like maybe, in some weird sort of way, he could’ve predicted that Bucky would not get along with himself.

And yeah, he realizes exactly how weird that sentence is.

But between the inaccurate self-image and the tendency to self-sabotage, Bucky has been his own worst enemy as long as Sam has known him, so why wouldn’t he miss a chance to make it literal?

 _Why_ is this the man he loves?

Sure, it’s not obvious, but Bucky keeps glowering at the younger version of himself every time he thinks no one is looking.

_Why is he like this?_

The younger version is more amused, if slightly perplexed, though whether that’s at Bucky or just at the situation in general Sam couldn’t say.

Either way, Sam can only watch them eye each other warily for so long before he turns to Bruce.

“So Doc, any ideas on how we’re gonna get him to go back?”

“At this point, all I have to go on is the pattern of gamma surging at the source when it happened. Tony can help me check if there were concurrent surges in any other forms of energy, but I strongly suspect replicating the exact circumstances won’t be enough to send him backwards; we’d need something more like an equal but opposite force, but what that would be… won’t be easy without the source of the energy in the first place.”

“Did you touch anything, baby Barnes?” Tony asks, staring at the young Barnes in the middle of his kitchen. “Poke anything? Push any buttons?”

“I… maybe?” Barnes says, his face scrunched in his attempt to remember.

“Helpful,” Tony drawls. “J, can you tell me who owned that warehouse in… what year are you from, anyway? 44?”

“45.”

Tony blinks at him, and at the same time Sam notices Bucky go absolutely still in his peripheral vision.

1945.

Bucky fell off a train into a ravine and lost his left arm to frostbite and a HYDRA doctor in January, 1945.

Tony breaks the silence, as he often does. “J? 1945.”

“HYDRA,” Bucky says before JARVIS can answer Tony.

He’s still looking down, his voice softer than it just was, and Sam can see the way he doesn’t want to look at the young version, the way he can’t look him in the eye when he knows if they send him back, he knows _exactly_ what they’re sending him back to.

“I remember that one,” he continues. “France, 1945. It was a HYDRA warehouse, but they’d abandoned it leaving the area. I don’t remember this, though.”

“Mr. Barnes is correct,” comes JARVIS’s smooth voice from the ceiling, and the young Barnes jumps like he’s been shot. “The warehouse was indeed owned by one of many cover names now associated with HYDRA operatives.”

“What the fuck is that?” Barnes asks.

Tony waves a hand absently. “Baby Barnes, meet JARVIS. Say hi, J.”

“Hello, sir,” JARVIS says.

“JARVIS is an AI. Artificial Intelligence. He pretty much runs the building.”

“And your life,” Bruce adds wryly.

Tony shrugs. “Sure, that too.”

Barnes’ eyes are wide. “Whoa.”

“Do you think there’s any chance HYDRA did this on purpose?” Sam asks, mostly because he knows the way Bucky can get around tech sometimes, and knowing if he doesn’t head off the thousand questions bubbling up behind those familiar blue eyes now, they’ll never get back on track. “Like. Sent him here?”

“Seems like a weird target if they did? Why now?” Tony asks.

“If not, though, why would they leave tech that can do _this_ behind?”

“Maybe they didn’t know what it did,” Bruce says. “If tech like that had gone off any time in the last five years, I’d know. I’ve had baseline gamma scans across the planet since Loki, since having access to Tony’s tech. Any spike that big would set off every alarm I have set. And if HYDRA had that kind of technology, they’d be using it.”

“Does it matter?” Bucky asks.

“It might,” Tony says. “I’ll have to run through all our records from when Nat dumped everything online, see if there’s any hint of this that we missed. If they knew how to do this, maybe they knew how to send him back.”

“So what I’m getting here,” says the younger Bucky, “is that basically you don’t have a clue how to send me back. So I guess my question is, what the hell am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

“Well, you’ll come back with us,” Steve says without hesitation.

Sam is exactly zero percent surprised Steve wants to cram another person into their tiny three bedroom walk up.

He’s also zero percent surprised that he’s on board. But. Well.

It’s still _Bucky_.

Of course he’ll come back with them.

But that doesn’t solve everything. It’s impossible to exist now without somehow being on the grid, and Bucky has no ID, no cards, no phone. It’s viable in the short term, but they have no idea how long he might be here.

Sam glances at Tony and watches the way his eyes are flickering between the two Buckys, thoughtful, and he suspects Tony may be ahead of him on that one.

Bucky’s eyes have narrowed at the younger version. “He’s not sleeping in my bed,” he says.

Sam can’t help but laugh.

…

_2017, the Barnes-Wilson-Rogers apartment_

_Bucky Barnes the younger_

Bucky genuinely has to wonder if he’s _that_ obvious with his feelings or if it’s just because this is _him_.

Because it’s actually _embarrassing_ how blatantly in love with Sam he is.

He can’t stop tracking the way Sam moves about the small apartment, his gaze most often lingering on Sam’s hands, or his lips, and sometimes his ass. His face is unbearably fond when he looks at Sam, a softness in it that doesn’t appear any other time.

He looks at Steve, sees the way Steve is watching the older version of him watch Sam, and he can tell Steve knows. Steve knows what Bucky looks like when he’s in love.

He’s always loved easily. It’s falling out of love that doesn’t come naturally to him.

But he’s not going to say anything about other-him’s very obvious feelings, because sometimes he can be a nice and tactful person. Sometimes.

“So, how’d you lose the arm?”

...Okay, so, rarely.

“Whoa, wait, how much is it a good idea to tell him?” Sam cuts in, interrupting Steve’s open mouth. “I really don’t want to break open the fabric of time and space because you’re curious. No offense.”

Bucky just shrugs lazily. Steve looks pained.

“Sam,” he says, and it’s the kind of syllable that carries a whole argument in it.

“Us being in the same room hasn’t blown anything up yet,” the other Bucky points out.

“I swear to god, Steve, if you mess up the time stream and we lose _this_ version,” Sam says, which is about the time Bucky realizes Sam loves him back. Adorable. Sam cuts the sincerity with a deflection, a thoughtful sounding, “Actually, do you think we’d get an upgrade?” But no one in the room is fooled.

“I can’t,” Steve says, and the grief on his face is clear even to someone who hadn’t been inseparable from him for over a decade now. “I _can’t,_ Sam. I can’t send him back without any idea. Maybe it’s a different universe and maybe it just erases his memory and this really is a past version and maybe it breaks everything but _I can’t._ ”

Steve’s wearing his determined face, which is never a good sign for anyone he’s arguing against.

Sam seems to know it, because he throws his hands up in the air. “Fine. No catastrophes so far, and what do I know about this shit?”

Steve moves forward, sits next to Bucky on the couch. It’s nice. Familiar.

“Bucky, within a month of the time you left from there's going to be a mission to capture Zola on a train. You fell.” Steve breathes in sharply, and by the look Bucky can tell he's watching it happen, knows he must have seen it. “Don’t get on that train.”

“No,” says the other Bucky softly. “Steve, if I’m not on that train, you die. It’s not. I’ve never regretted that.”

Steve’s gaze whips around to him, his face a twisted mask of guilt and grief and pain, and Bucky can tell this is about more than an arm. The arm has been replaced by an _incredible_ prosthesis (the future is _awesome_ ). Steve’s face bears the marks of something not so easily managed.

“Bucky,” he says, and he sounds cracked open, raw, the way he only has when… When his mom died.

“Did I _die?”_ he asks, disbelieving.

It’s Bucky who answers, his whole body rigid, muscles and metal both. “No.” And then, softer, “That might have been better.”

Steve makes a wounded noise, but he doesn’t disagree, which means whatever they’re not telling him is about a thousand times worse than he was imagining.

“What _happened?_ ”

“You don’t want to know,” Sam says.

…

_The Barnes-Wilson-Rogers apartment_

_Sam Wilson_

There is nothing in this world Sam currently wants less than to tell this young, comparatively innocent version of Bucky what happens to him. Happened. Might happen. God only knows what the right verb tense is in this funhouse mirror situation.

How do you even answer that? How do you tell a man that in your universe, he’s kidnapped and tortured and stripped bare of all that he is, that he becomes an assassin for those he hates, that it’s been three years and the concept of choice still feels like a foreign thing some days?

You don’t.

Sam won’t.

“So instead you’re going to leave me imagining the worst case-scenario? And that’s better?”

“Yes,” Sam says, and it’s quiet but firm, brooking no argument.

Because the thing is, maybe he loses his memory, in which case it doesn’t matter what they tell him anyway. Maybe he remembers and it changes nothing, becomes nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy, in which case he doesn’t need that knowledge hanging over him. And maybe it changes in his universe, in which case it’s for the best that he never knows what almost was. No one needs that.

“Do you want some fresh clothes?” Sam asks, both to change the subject and because Bucky is still wearing his army uniform, which he can’t imagine is particularly clean. “I actually think you’re closest to my size?”

It’s weird to think about, because it would feel like Bucky should be the easiest for him to borrow from, but this timeline has Bucky broader in the shoulders by a long shot, not just because of the prosthetic but because of the muscle he needs to bear it. Younger Bucky has much more normal human proportions, as opposed to the super soldiers Sam is usually surrounded by. He’s a bit slimmer than Sam, but close enough.

“That would be appreciated,” Bucky agrees. Sam ducks into his bedroom, grabs a t-shirt and a pair of sweats, and tosses them at Bucky on his way back out. And yes, he does take the opportunity to see Bucky in a color other than black, but he doesn’t think he can be blamed for that.

And it turns out Bucky looks great in purple, which is. _Something_.

He turns away from the sight of Bucky Barnes in his clothes, hair shorn too short and face too innocent but still _Bucky_ , still enough to make Sam’s breath catch. He finds another Bucky looking back at him, his face calm but something Sam can’t quite interpret lurking dark and stormy behind his eyes. Sam raises an eyebrow. Bucky looks away.

...

_Outside a grocery store in Brooklyn_

_Sam Wilson_

It’s _stupid_ , is the thing.

It’s been two days since Bucky showed up in France saying he was from 1945, and Sam can tell that he’s getting a little stir crazy, starting to vibrate around the edges.

So Sam offers to take him to the grocery store they can easily walk to, both because they need food and because Bucky needs to _move_.

The thing is, being out with both of them could end poorly, because while Bucky isn’t as recognizable as Steve (and Sam is less recognizable still, a fact he has mixed feelings on that are mostly grateful), there are still enough people out there who would recognize him. And then notice the twin.

Sam doesn’t want to deal with that, and he doesn’t think the past Bucky alone will garner any notice, given the differences.

Given the way most people peg Bucky these days is by the arm.

So he and the time traveler go to the store while Steve and Bucky say they’re going to stay home and bake brownies, which precedence suggests means one of three things: either Bucky will bake brownies and Steve will watch, they will get into a super soldier flour fight and the brownie batter will sit forgotten on the counter, or no brownies will happen at all, and any way it happens they will both be unrepentant.

Bucky’s shock at the sheer number of options at the grocers brings back memories of the same man in a different store on a different continent, fresh out of Shuri’s delicate hands, staring at the shelves and unable to process the sheer number of options. The memory aches, but Sam reminds himself to use it as a mark of Bucky’s progress instead, and then pushes it away, guiding a different version of the same man through the isles.

They leave the grocer, Bucky holding three bags and Sam three more, discussing why exactly chicken eggs are so large and human eggs so small, when there’s a sound to their left. Bucky turns, and takes a blow dart to the neck. He blinks in shock.

“Fuck,” Sam says, and he’s ducking but it’s too late already, he can tell it’s too late.

There’s a throb in his neck, a dizziness that means whatever tranquilizers they’re using are _good_ , and then Sam’s last thought before darkness; _dammit, the milk is going to go bad._

…

_Location unknown_

_Bucky Barnes the younger_

He wakes to voices.

This in and of itself is not that unusual.

The unusual part is that he wakes up on his back, when he _never_ sleeps on his back. And when he attempts to shift positions, he can’t. Something chafes at his wrists.

He opens his eyes to find that his wrists and ankles are cuffed by metal restraints to a table.

It brings back memories, Zola and needles and fire in his veins and the constant repetition of his name, rank, and serial number. He shudders.

“You’re awake,” says a voice. It’s deep in pitch and soft in volume, unfamiliar. “I admit, when we got the alert that a device had gone off in France, you were not what we were expecting.”

Bucky twists his head until he catches sight of a man, probably just over average height, with brown hair tied back at the nape of his neck. He wears a lab coat, which does not give Bucky a good feeling about this place.

“Who the hell are you?”

The man smiles faintly. “Don’t you know? If you cut off one head, two more will grow in its place.”

It’s like someone has dropped ice down his spine.

…

_The Barnes-Wilson-Rogers apartment_

_Bucky Barnes the elder_

Sam is gone.

Sam is _gone._

_They took him._

They took Sam, and Bucky is going to find them and tear every single one of them limb from limb with no regrets, because _they made him into this weapon_ and _now he gets to aim_.

They will regret ever touching Sam.

…

_The Barnes-Wilson-Rogers apartment_

_Steve Rogers_

Steve hasn’t been afraid of Bucky in a long time.

He’s afraid now.

Not that Bucky will hurt him. Just anyone between him and Sam.

Steve knows that Bucky loves Sam. Of course he knows; he’s known at least as long as Bucky has, if not longer. He knows what Bucky looks like when he falls in love.

Bucky loves easy. Or he did, anyway. Not as much these days. But just because he loves easy doesn’t mean it’s not deep. Doesn’t mean it’s not real.

Steve thinks Bucky may have loved everyone he’s ever been with, and that’s not a short list.

Even with all that, the way he loves Sam is different.

Bucky would’ve died for anyone he’d ever loved.

Sam may be the only one he’d watch the world burn for.

Well. And Steve himself, but that’s always been different.

All Steve knows is that if they don’t find Sam fast, he’s going to have a very hard time keeping Bucky from doing something. Something Bucky won’t regret, but Sam might regret the necessity for.

He calls Tony.

...

_Location unknown_

_Sam Wilson_

It’s not the first time Sam has been kidnapped, is the thing. It’s a hazard of his current part time job.

So when he wakes up alone, grocery-less, in a tiny, windowless room, he’s not exactly surprised. Just annoyed.

And then he remembers Bucky.

 _Twenty-eight year old_ Bucky.

Who probably has a lot less experience with this kind of thing. Who, depending on who kidnapped them, is going to be a lot more valuable to them than Sam.

Suddenly the fact that he’s alone seems a lot more ominous.

But he’s not tied up, which is rookie mistake number one, and there’s a two inch blade attached to the inside of his belt still, which is rookie mistake number two, and that’s _plenty_.

…

_Location unknown_

_Bucky Barnes the younger_

He thought whatever they had him in was a scanner of some sort, but no scanner he’s ever been in has _hurt_ like this. It feels like his brain is being peeled off the inside of his scalp, like every nerve ending in his body is crying out for attention.

He doesn’t know how long it lasts before everything goes dark.

…

_The Barnes-Wilson-Rogers apartment_

_Steve Rogers_

The thing is, Steve knew Bucky was an idiot. He did.

Bucky is brilliant, his mind tactical and scientific and capable of making great leaps of logic.

But he’s also unequivocally an idiot sometimes.

And this is one of those times.

“Do you think he’s keeping Sam safe?” he asks, for the fourth time in twenty minutes.

Steve knows that this is his panic talking. He knows that Bucky is just _worried_ , because he _cares_. It doesn’t help that there’s a lot of different emotions twisted up in the fact that it’s probably _HYDRA_ that has them.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it any less _annoying_.

“I should be there; I should’ve been there. I can’t…” Bucky starts again, and Steve turns to face him, puts a hand on his shoulder hitting the join between flesh and metal.

“Bucky, _stop_.” Bucky looks up, meets his eyes and Steve can see the barely banked panic there. Steve breathes deep, and he watches as Bucky pulls in a shaky breath in an attempt to match it.

“Look,” Steve says carefully. “There is no world in which Bucky Barnes doesn’t do his best to protect Sam Wilson. Past Bucky or not. We’re going to find them.”

Bucky reaches out, takes Steve’s free hand in his, and grips it so tightly it would break bones if he were anyone else.

They stay there for a moment, Steve measuring his breaths and Bucky matching them.

The tension in Bucky’s grip is only just starting to loosen when Steve’s phone rings, loud and piercing in the silence, a familiar trill he’s assigned to Tony.

He grabs it with his right hand and pokes the screen to accept the call.

“Tell me you have good news, Tony.”

“I mean, anyone being in Jersey is never good news, but I’ve got a location to start with, so I guess that’s good.”

Panic gives way to purpose as they mobilize in seconds.

…

_New Jersey_

_Bucky Barnes the elder_

The place reeks of HYDRA.

Steve spends exactly two seconds trying to convince Bucky that he shouldn’t deliver himself to them before realizing exactly how little consideration Bucky is giving the argument right now.

The thing is, Bucky knows how they work. He knows how they build. He knows how they organize. None of this is conscious knowledge, just the unconscious patterns derived from decades of experience, leading him down two floors and back and back and left. The place is sparsely staffed - Steve knocks two guys out with a well-timed throw of his shield but Bucky doesn’t even get to fire his guns.

He ducks his head around the corner in the basement, still cautious despite the lack of resistance so far.

He blinks at the sight.

Sam is standing in the middle of the hallway, one inch belt knife in his right hand, pistol in his left, two guards unconscious on the floor. He’s barely even breathing deeply. There’s a cut across the left side of his forehead, a trail of long-dried blood beneath it, and a tear in his t-shirt.

He looks up, catches sight of Bucky peering around the corner, and leans a hip against the wall with a smirk.

“What took you so long?”

He’s the most beautiful thing Bucky has ever seen.

“Sam,” he breathes, holstering his gun and striding forward, and then Sam is moving too, and then Sam is in his arms and Bucky is burying his face in the crook of Sam’s shoulder and holding on a little too tightly, but based on the way Sam is gripping him back that’s probably okay.

“I’m okay,” Sam is whispering, Bucky realizes. “I’m okay.” This is when Bucky notices the catch in his breath. He breathes deeply, lets go of Sam and steps back. His eyes flicker over to Steve, but Steve is watching the hallway in both directions for guards, unconcerned with the pair of them.

“I’m glad,” Bucky says, softer than he means to but in a way he doesn’t regret. Sam smiles.

“We should probably go save your ass now, though,” Sam says, a little louder, enough to catch Steve’s attention and pull him back in.

“Have you seen him since you were taken?” Steve asks. Sam shakes his head.

There’s a sinking feeling in Bucky’s stomach. He doesn’t want to be right, but he leads the way anyway, down another floor and toward the other side of the building.

…

_Location unknown_

_Sam Wilson_

Sam had known they’d come, although admittedly he hadn’t been sure it’d be this fast.

Then again, so far this has been a particularly shoddy kidnapping.

He can only hope that luck holds in finding their time traveler.

He feels better about their chances with a pistol in his hand, Bucky at his front and Steve at his back.

Bucky’s path forward is sure, confident, which is part of why Sam is struck completely immobile when they walk into a room to find Bucky strapped in a familiar chair.

A chair that haunts his nightmares. Haunts Steve’s nightmares. Haunts Bucky’s memories.

Bucky shoots the technician before Sam has even processed his existence.

Sam doesn’t have it in himself to care. He can’t stop staring at the image of Bucky in that chair, eyes closed in sleep or unconsciousness, looking impossibly vulnerable in a way that makes Sam feel cracked open, in a way that tells Sam that he won’t be sleeping tonight.

It’s Bucky that moves forward, and Sam can kick himself for that later, for being less able to keep himself together than the man whose trauma they’re confronting directly. But Bucky’s always been like that. Sam freezes up in the face of his traumas. So does Steve, who’s standing behind him still as stone. Bucky can’t stop moving in the face of his, like maybe he can outrun them if he only tries hard enough.

Sam can see the tremor in his flesh hand as he reaches out to unbuckle the straps, hands impossibly gentle.

From the chair itself, Bucky makes a murmur low in his throat and peels his eyes open, flicking them rapidly around the room.

“Miss me, gorgeous?” he says, his eyes out of focus just over Sam’s left shoulder.

Sam shudders out a breath, glad he’s conscious. Glad he seems to know who Sam is.

“You know I did,” he passes back with a smirk that feels too-brittle, shoddily plastered on. “Woke up without you and the pining started right away.”

“Knew it,” Bucky grins, and then his eyes slide closed.

It’s still weird. The way he makes Sam feel, especially when he flirts, because he’s _Bucky_.

But he’s also not.

And it’s weird, because it’s not like… it feels like he doesn’t love Bucky without what happened to him, and that’s not what it is. And not just because that sounds terrible and Sam doesn’t want to believe he’s capable of it.

He’s pretty sure he _could_ love this one. The man that Sam loves is there, in the corners of his mouth when he smiles, in the softness of his hands when he reaches out to touch.

Yeah, Sam could love him.

But he doesn’t.

And it’s weird.

But right now it doesn’t matter.

Bucky is scooping up the younger version of himself and then Steve is picking up his feet like he’s peeling them out of almost-dry concrete and they’re leaving.

Steve knocks two guys out with his shield on their way, and then they’re stepping out into daylight and Sam can’t resist turning his face up toward it.

He does manage to wait until they make it back to the car before asking the relevant questions.

“How long has it been?”

“About 8 hours,” Steve answers. Bucky is at the wheel, which feels like a questionable decision but Sam’s not going to say anything about it. It’s not like Bucky can’t drive. He’s actually terrifyingly good at it. He just doesn’t much care for traffic laws.

“How’d you find us so fast?”

“Tony tracked the van they stuffed you into. Idiots were in direct sight of a security cam. Van was registered to a residence not half a mile from the base.”

“Poorly funded splinter cell?”

Steve shrugs, glancing over at Bucky unconscious beside him in the back seat. “I assume so. Tony will confirm; he was outside if we needed backup.”

“Any idea how they knew who he was?”

Steve sighs. “I was hoping they didn’t. Bruce thinks it’s not impossible they were tracking the signature he made on arrival, though. It was fairly specific, and unlike Bruce they knew where to expect it, meaning it wouldn’t take that much power to maintain a scan. And apparently he’s still… something to do with gamma.”

“He’s still emitting gamma rays,” Bucky says abruptly. Sam glances over to see his hands gripped too tightly around the steering wheel. “His body absorbed some of it in the transfer, leaving him at a higher energy state, and it’s slowly coming back down. Bruce didn’t seem concerned, but it would be enough to track if you knew what you were looking for. And where in general to look.”

“So where are we going?”

Steve grimaces, which is enough to make Bucky _almost_ crack a smile when he sees it in the rear view mirror.

“Tony has offered to let us stay, and given his high level of security, we’ve taken him up on the offer.”

Sam grins. Steve looks pained, but it’s exactly how he always looks when he has to accept favors or gifts that he knows he can’t repay, so Sam finds it amusing, mostly.

Not that he doesn’t get it. But Steve’s reluctance to take gifts from Tony in particular (who loves giving them, especially elaborate and expensive ones) will never not be funny.

Questions answered, Sam feels his adrenaline level abruptly drop, leaving him drained and spinning and slowly sinking into sleep.

...

_Stark Tower_

_Bucky Barnes the younger_

“What am I supposed to do, then? Just stay inside until you can send me back? I’m a prisoner now?”

Bruce looks at Tony, and then back at Bucky.

“I mean. There’s a possibility that I have a gamma blocker I can inject that will stop you from being traceable; it’s something I was experimenting with a while back that never panned out, but it did suppress release of gamma radiation from the skin. It… it’s experimental, but if your metabolic baselines are anywhere near what they are in 2017, then they’re actually closer to mine than they are the average human, so I’d be comfortable with trying it after running a few simulations.”

Bucky breathes out, carefully.

The uncertainty of it all is incredibly frustrating. He’s been ignoring the long term implications of all of this fairly successfully until now, but the truth is he has no idea what it means. There’s no guarantee that there _is_ a way back, let alone that it’s something obtainable any time soon. He knows that Bruce and Tony are working on it, that they’ve been calling in everyone they know to help, but even geniuses can take a while to break the laws of physics. Reverse break the laws of physics. Bucky doesn’t claim to know. He always liked his science classes well enough, but every time Bruce and Tony talk to each other without translating for everyone else, it goes well over his head. He can’t even help get himself back home.

And that’s what it is. This feels like a visit. He wants to go _home_. He wants to see Steve, _his_ Steve, and the rest of the Commandos. He wants to be in a place where things feel familiar, instead of a place where he barely recognizes half of the things he sees.

He wants to go home.

But it’s not that easy.

He looks over at the other, older, more wounded version of himself. Maybe that’s his future. Maybe his life is leading to a place so bad Steve won’t even describe it to him.

But it’s still his life to live. And he has proof that he’ll come out the other side, still capable of being whole.

He glances over at Sam.

Still capable of finding love.

That’s enough.

So he has to believe that Tony and Bruce and their friends are capable of putting him back. Sending him to live the rest of the life he’s supposed to have, be it this one or a different one.

And maybe, while he’s here, he can change things for the better.

After all, he deserves to be happy someday, doesn’t he?

…

_The Barnes-Wilson-Rogers apartment_

_Bucky Barnes the younger_

The interesting thing about attempting to convince a future version of himself to talk out his feelings with Sam is it winds up being stupidly easy.

This version of him may be more reserved, especially in his shoulders and arms, where it looks like a lot of Bucky’s natural expressiveness has been trained out of him, but the signs are still there, if you know what to look for.

And Bucky knows better than anyone.

He’s seen the tension, is the thing. The way his muscles tighten when he watches Bucky flirt with Sam, because Bucky loves to flirt with pretty people who will flirt back. And because Sam is sexy as hell, with a confident competence that Bucky can’t look away from.

He gets it.

But he knows himself, and he knows the way insecurity sits on his ribs, the way he twists to accommodate it there, and he knows that Bucky is jealous because he thinks of the younger version of himself as a better version. Less broken.

And he wants Sam to have the best, enough that he would let it happen in silence if no one pushed him.

Sam won’t push.

Bucky will.

…

_The Barnes-Wilson-Rogers apartment_

_Sam Wilson_

Young Bucky has been an incorrigible flirt since he got here, but something is different.

Sam is leaning against the peninsula counter in their kitchen, stirring a bowl of white chocolate macadamia nut cookie dough. Bucky is sitting across from him, leaning forward toward him, with noticeable intent.

It’s… weird.

Maybe it says something about his life that this behavior makes him think Bucky is up to something.

Maybe it just says something about Bucky.

But this has been going on for the last three days, and Sam is suspicious.

He’s particularly suspicious because he’s noticed that the dial on the flirting only turns up to eleven when both Buckys are home.

And maybe he has a guess as to what Bucky is up to.

And maybe he’s not mad about it.

But all of that has led to them here, one of Bucky’s hands reaching across the counter and the other gripping a spoon that’s full of cookie dough for taste testing, a smirk spreading across his face, which is of course when Bucky — the other one — walks in, takes one look at what’s happening, and turns around and walks back out.

Bucky, seated at the counter, cackles like a madman. Sam just smiles, sticking his own spoon into the dough for a taste.

…

_The Barnes-Wilson-Rogers apartment_

_Bucky Barnes the elder_

It’s stupid to be jealous of himself.

It’s stupid. It’s so stupid.

...

_The Barnes-Wilson-Rogers apartment_

_Sam Wilson_

“I’m not stupid, you know,” Bucky says, but he won’t look at Sam. They’re standing in the middle of Sam’s room, and Sam can tell something is about to break by the way Bucky’s shoulders are held. He can only hope what breaks is the tension and not _them_. “I’ve seen how you look at him. You’re… interested.”

“Of course I’m _interested_. He’s you.” Bucky opens his mouth, but Sam cuts him off, because he knows exactly how Bucky is probably interpreting that — in the worst way possible. “But he’s also not. He’s… who you used to be, or maybe who you were in another universe, I don’t know, I’ll leave the full implications for Stark and Banner. I don’t care. Either way, of course it’s interesting to meet someone who’s almost you. But he’s _not_.”

“Yeah, must be nice to talk to a version of me with a brain that still works right,” Bucky mumbles.

“No,” Sam says.

“No?” Bucky looks up for the first time since they started this conversation, and Sam counts it as a minor victory.

“No. It’s not _nice_. It’s like. A shitty mirror. It’s a reflection, sure, but it’s not a very accurate one, and it’s just _off_ enough to be uncomfortable. He’s you, but he hasn’t called me a single name since he got here. He had to ask how I take my coffee. He didn’t ask if the bird we passed was a relative of mine.”

“Gotta be at least a distant cousin,” Bucky murmurs, the words more habitual than anything else.

“But it’s. I. You flirt with him!” Bucky finally says.

“Of course I do,” Sam agrees. “He flirts with me. Guy that hot flirts with you, you gotta flirt back.” He smiles.

Bucky looks away again. “I see you watch him. You like him.”

Sam sighs, and his voice goes soft. “How is it so easy for you to see the way I look at him and so hard for you to see the way I look at you?”

He watches Bucky process the implications. They’ve been dancing around it for ages, neither ever saying anything, Sam knows that. It’s only now that he’s realizing maybe Bucky _doesn’t_ know that _._ Sam had assumed it was obvious; he’s not a subtle man, generally. To be fair, neither is Bucky. The way his face softens when he looks at Sam is a dead giveaway.

But Sam has never wanted to push. He’s not in any hurry, and there are enough things in this life that Bucky didn’t get a choice in. Sam wanted him to have this one, without any pressure.

It hadn’t occurred to him that Bucky hadn’t known the choice was there.

He has to say it.

“He’s someone I could love. You’re the one I already do.”

Bucky’s breath sounds like it’s been pushed out of him, the way he exhales in disbelief.

“You… love me?”

“Of course I do, dumbass,” Sam says, and his voice is so impossibly soft that there’s no way for Bucky to take it as an insult.

Bucky smiles.

No.

That’s an understatement. Sam has seen Bucky smile before.

This is something else.

Bucky _beams._ The sky is cracking open after a storm, letting sunbeams through. Sam is illuminated, haloed in it.

If Sam had ever wondered if Bucky loved him, this is answer enough right here.

And he has to reach forward in the face of it, taking Bucky’s right hand in his left, carefully telegraphed but confident.

Bucky entangles their fingers, but it’s Sam that steps forward carefully, closing the gap between them, tips his head up just enough, and says, “Can I?” He knows the intent is clear, but he still has to ask.

He won’t push this.

In the end, it’s Bucky that closes the gap completely, the answer in the act. He presses his lips to Sam’s, reaching out with his left hand to rest on the juncture of Sam’s collarbone and neck, the metal human-warm from the generators that power it from under the synthetic skin. His touch is soft, careful, and Sam _aches_ with how much he loves him.

They pull apart by only inches, foreheads resting together, and Sam can see Bucky’s helpless smile, can tell he is smiling helplessly in return.

And then he’s laughing. “He did this on purpose, didn’t he?” Sam asks when he can.

Bucky twists his face into a question.

“Bucky,” Sam says, and then realizes that isn’t clear. “The other one. He did this on purpose, didn’t he? Made you… jealous.”

He watches understanding dawn in Bucky’s eyes.

“That motherfucker,” he swears softly. Sam laughs again.

It’s not what he imagined their first kiss might be.

It’s perfect.

…

_France_

_Bucky Barnes the younger_

“You’re confident in this, right?” he asks, because no matter how much he knows Tony and Bruce are geniuses by now, he knows this is still an _experiment_.

It’s neither of them who answer him. Instead, it’s the teenaged, dark skinned girl dressed all in purple who responds to him. Shuri, they called her.

“Based on the trials we’ve performed in rats, yes. I’m confident. No rodents were harmed in the making of this time travel device.” She smiles, just barely on the cocky side of confidence. Bucky can’t help but smile back.

Bruce steps forward, taking a look at the dials. “We’ve run the calculations at least a collective fifteen times just to be sure, but this should cause you to exit within twenty four hours of when you disappeared, erring slightly further out just in case your memory of the exact date is off.”

There’s a comfort to being back in his uniform. It’s familiar. He hopes more things will be soon. Five months in the future has been enough adventure for him for a while.

He flicks his gaze over to where Sam and another version of himself are standing, Sam’s arms wrapped easily around Bucky’s shoulders, both of them watching the proceedings calmly. It’s reassuring. It’s a reminder that he’s changed things for the better. It’s a reminder that he can trust these people.

It’s a reminder that he has things to look forward to.

He looks over at Steve, nervous in the way that makes him look like he expects to be smaller, the mannerism still present after all this time, and remembers what he’s going back to.

“Ready?” Bruce asks, his quiet voice carrying in the mostly-silent space.

Bucky smiles.

“Ready.”

Bruce twists a dial, flips a switch, and a high pitched noise starts up. Then, the world goes dark.

…

_France_

_Bucky Barnes the younger_

_1945_

The last thing he remembers is a ringing in his ears, a high pitched whine, and then darkness.

The weird part, though, is that he’s not alone.

“Hey, Stevie,” Bucky rasps, and Steve smiles back and it feels like _home_.


End file.
